<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>can i bleed enough to fill up what the engine takes? by Pidonyx</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27973683">can i bleed enough to fill up what the engine takes?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pidonyx/pseuds/Pidonyx'>Pidonyx</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, Nonbinary Mike Milligram, POV Second Person, anyways this is pretty much just the Kara scenes from the comic from her perspective, first nat anthem fic!, i got jeong as her last name from the BT business card sofia had in that one panel, i love her sm and her husband......so i stayed up and wrote this instead of sleeping, i think that’s right?, kara is autistic and bi because i say so</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:00:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,276</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27973683</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pidonyx/pseuds/Pidonyx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with a call.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kara 100 Percent | Kara Jeong/Kara Jeong’s Husband</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>can i bleed enough to fill up what the engine takes?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Ok as soon as Kara showed up in issue #3 i fell absolutely in love with her and her character; she’s brilliant and i love her and i really wanted to write something so here this is? i hope you guys like ✌️</p><p>title from gun. by mcr cause nat anthem is very conventional weapons to me (as dd is to killjoys california)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It starts with a call. You take it, pick it up, and there, on the phone. You know that voice; Code Red — not Red. Sofia, Sofia Ramírez, Red is long gone. She’s asking for you, but not you. And what do you say?</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“There is no one by that name here.” It is not a lie.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She wants you to meet her — and the rest of the Fabulous Killjoys, who else could she mean in these times by “we” — and you say yes, but you mean no. You’re tired. You’re settled. You don’t want to do this any more, even if it means giving in; because you have him, you have your life, the two of you, and you don’t need anything else. Especially not to remind you of your old life.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">But you go. He asks you, when you get off the call and you’re gripping the phone tight in your hand, so tight your fingernails and knuckles and scars are white. He asks. “Everything okay, Kara?” </span> <span class="s2"><em>Are</em> </span> <span class="s1">you</span> <span class="s2"> <em>okay?</em> </span> <span class="s1">is what he means. He grounds you. You are Kara, and this is your husband, and this is your apartment and your life together.</span></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yeah,” you say. Your voice does not shake, because that’s not who you are. You reach out to him anyways, and he lets you run your fingers against his cheek, press your palm against his jaw and feel the warmth of another person. “But I have to run out.” His eyes still look worried. But he doesn’t stop you, wouldn’t stop you, just squeezes your hand at the door, and makes sure you have your purse with your keys before you go.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The run-down café at the corner of Market and Portola is the same as it’s ever been, in its vintage pastels, sugar sweet and real, not plastic like everything else has become. It’s in your bubble: home, husband, work, little cafe. Places that feel like being a person and not a machine. It’s a shame, then —</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“The place is going out of business,” you say, tone sharp. Too sharp, the customer sitting at the counter looks over his shoulder at you, and you reevaluate your tone. Make it flatter. Make it softer.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The motley crew at the table in the furthest corner looks up. They aren’t the same — who is? You certainly aren’t. That makes a part of your mind laugh. — all far more normal than they ever would have been back when you were the Fabulous Killjoys, Teenage Exterminators. Before Blue died. All the better — you don’t want to remember, and you don’t want to get in trouble. Trouble for you means trouble for him. Trouble in your bubble. “It’s happening everywhere,” a woman who must be Sofia says, verging on too sincere for your tastes. You only can tell it’s her from the voice, familiar as a childhood lullaby; she looks like a stranger without her wig and mask, costume baring and hiding her at once.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Kyle?” Mike asks, eyebrows arched in a way that’s irritating, because you don’t know what he means by it. The name makes your insides feel prickly, too, which doesn’t boost your goodwill towards them at all. You can feel your mouth twisting and thinning.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Kara,” you say, and with no sugarcoating, “and the answer is no.” You let your eyes sweep over the group, eyebrow ticking up at Maxwell — monotone grey, he looks like a professor, but at least he looks healthy. Compared to Mike, who’s pale as a ghost and thinned out in places like a worn linen sheet, and Sofia, who just looks tired and a little bit ill, especially so. There’s a kid with them, an attitude poorly shellacked over bald vulnerable fear that you can strip away with only a surface-level glance; poor thing. He’s seated next to Mike, noses wrinkled in exactly the same way as he slurps at his soda through a straw. You wonder if Mike has even noticed the similarity yet; it would be just like them not to, when the obvious is right in front of him.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“No way am I getting in that car with you,” you add, noticing Mike’s eyes flashing with argumentative fervor, and cutting him off before he can speak. “I have a life, people I care about, a job.”</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Mike scoffs, smiling in a way that’s not at all happy. “A </span> <span class="s2"> <em>job</em> </span> <span class="s1">...”</span></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">You eye him coldly. “Beats laying around watching TV.” You cross your arms, and tap your finger against the bare skin. </span> <span class="s2"> <em>Steady</em> </span> <span class="s1"><em>.</em> Tap. Tap. Tap. “All </span> <span class="s2"><em>that</em> </span> <span class="s1">did was get you right where Mom and Dad wanted you.” Hm. Maybe not so steady.</span></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Mike is on his feet now, the kid wide-eyed. He looks angry, but that’s essentially his natural state, even more after Blue died all those years ago, for the short bit before all of you were split apart. Moody Mike is what you’re used to, and you don’t flinch when he spits, “What do you know about that?”</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I know I’ve had enough,” you reply, tone smooth and firm. You’ve had more than enough. Seen more than enough. You don’t need more laser burns and acid sizzling skin in your life, the smell of rot and fester and pain in your nose, the ever-rushing lurch of Mike’s muscle car, the hovering stink of car-sick in the hot air inside for the hours it takes to drive anywhere your Job takes you. Your home now smells like lavender and your husband’s cologne and fabric softener, and there’s no threat of violence when you’re lying on the couch. You’ve had enough. “Maybe they’re right,” you add, to see Mike bristle. You half believe it. “Might be nice to not spend your nights cowering in a fetal position reliving the Hell of your childhood.”</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Sofia’s brows are knitted. She’s still seated, but her manicured hand, streaked still in days-old blood — you still have the sight, it never left, and you don’t know if the elderly owner and the regulars he’s serving coffee to see paint or nail polish or nothing at all — is clenched on top of a raygun. A sky-blue raygun. It’s yours, or it was yours, and now it’s not, but Sophia seems to think it still is. “You sound like a Sterelax commercial,” she says, voice low and measured, like she doesn’t want to be caught either. The emotion in her tone betrays her, though. “When the hell did </span> <span class="s2"> <em>you</em> </span> <span class="s1"> remember everything?” It sounds almost like an accusation. Like you should have come running back the second you woke up in your shared bedroom, stumbling to the toilet and vomiting up the contents of your stomach, head spinning with remembered violence and a corpse in the backseat, feet in your lap.</span></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“I don’t </span> <span class="s2"> <em>watch</em> </span> <span class="s1"> TV,” you say, simply, </span> <span class="s2"> <em>something</em> </span> <span class="s1"> coiling in your words; even you don’t know what, turning away from the stained white table with its has-been inhabitants.</span></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“Kara — ” Sofia says, voice edging towards desperate, and you don’t care, even with the careful way she says your name, flippant like it never even occurred to her that it would matter and it’s terrible and wonderful to hear it in her voice. “We need you.” You don’t need to look ather to know she’s holding your — </span> <span class="s2"> <em>the</em> </span> <span class="s1"> raygun out in her hand. You don’t take it.</span></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“It’s time to grow up, Killjoys,” you say, and you leave without looking back.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Home is good. Home is safe. Weight lifts off your shoulders as soon as you’re in the door, purse forgotten on the end table, boots kicked off by the couch. He watches you toss your things across the room with vitriol, and doesn’t judge, just looks up from his laptop with concern. “Woah, hey — what was that about?”</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">You don’t want to talk about it, and you can’t, really, if you want to keep your bubble of a fresh, happy start safe, so you just say, “Some old friends hoping I was someone else.”</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">You can see the softness settle in his expression, and you love him more for it. You know what he probably took that to mean, and it’s not even completely untrue — you were someone else to them, and they’re unhappy you aren’t the same. He sets his computer to the side to let you crawl up into his lap, warm leg under your head, a little prickly with hair but smelling like cedar bodywash, putting a large, gentle hand on your shoulder that you reach up to brush with your own fingertips. “The hell with them,” he says, and you couldn’t agree more, even if he doesn’t quite know the whole story. He’s safe, and you’re home, so it’s fine, and maybe you’ll tell him one day. You still don’t really want to.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Except it seems like you don’t get a choice, because there’s a screech of tires outside, and you curse, scrambling to get to your knees and peer through the hanging blinds. “I guess your ‘friends’ don’t understand the word ‘no’,” he says, and no, no, he’s the one who doesn’t understand, getting to his feet to look out as well, sounding merely annoyed for your sake when he should be so much more. “Kara...?” he says softly, eyes fixed on the three women outside of your apartment, your safe space, your home.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Down!” You bark, instinct kicking in, tackling him to the ground, even as he protests that you should be getting down, instead — always trying to protect you, because he loves you and you love him. But it’s your job now to protect him, because you know this life and he doesn’t. The window is shattering above you, glass raining in a hail of deadly glitter, and you get to your hands and knees, shoving him in front of you, pointing. “Get in the tub!” you order, voice cracking with the volume you have to reach over the hail of bullets, but still not shaking. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Kara — what the —?!” You can hear the fear and confusion in his voice, and it makes your heart squeeze. You never wanted this for him. For either of you. You wanted to leave this behind, you wanted something that was untouched, some kind of a life where you could be normal and Kara and loved. You don’t get to have everything you want, it seems. Your purse has been hurled through the air by the gunfire, riddled with bullet holes, your raygun — Sofia. Sneaky minx — spilling out of it. You know what you have to do, because you do what is needed, and you protect what you love, because you are allowed to be a little selfish. You take the gun.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Trust me,” you say.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">You sit alone in your husband’s kitchen and listen to the door being bashed in, counting the beats in your head. You think of your father, the words, the belt, the Trans Am, Blue, dead in the car, all the people you’ve killed. Who you are now, not afraid of anything. Raygun up. Steady.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The door comes crashing in, and your feet are bloody from the glass on the floor, but you run anyways. You don’t feel it. You don’t feel the bullet that grazes your temple, either. It’s routine now, muscle memory that takes over, but you aren’t what you were, from the days in the desert. You’re someone different, someone that you always were, and your raygun pulses find their marks.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The skidding of a second set of wheels outside marks the arrival of your old friends, and when the bloodbath is over, Mike’s kid with a smoking gun and a death under his belt, you stand there on shaking legs and you’re back to it again. It doesn’t hurt as much as you thought it would. You don’t feel as sick as you used to either, though that might be the adrenaline. Regardless, you duck back through the splinters of the door, and he’s there, and he’s safe and whole, so your mission is complete. He’s running for you, pale and shaking, skidding on the glass in the kitchen. But he’s okay. “What’s going on?” he asks, desperate, breathless, fingers hovering near the bullet wound on your head like he’s terrified to touch it. You don’t blame him. He hasn’t seen this before.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“I need you to stay with your family — in Kansas City, for a while,” you say, and now your voice not only doesn’t shake, but it almost sounds calm. “It’s the only way to keep you safe.” You mean that. You mean it. There’s blood on you and on your couch and your kitchen floor, in the perfect apartment the two of you picked out together when you moved to San Francisco. Your little bubble has been invaded and now it’s about protecting what you can, what’s most important. </span> <span class="s2"> <em>He’s</em> </span> <span class="s1"> most important. He brushes hair behind your ear, carefully, his fingers and your own skin sticky with blood.</span></p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Look at your head,” he says, voice tremulous. You hold his face in both hands, cradle it between the two of you. You love him. You love him so much that you’ve shared your safe, customized perfect little life of yourself with him. But you have to do this. You have to. You don’t have another choice.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">You kiss your husband goodbye in the wreckage of your San Francisco apartment, pass out in the passenger seat of a car you never wanted to see again, in the lap of someone that you used to know before you found yourself and saved yourself. But not before you hear Mike mutter, half-under their breath, “Good t’ have you back, Kara Hundred-percent.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>